3/20/12

Cupping Therapy History

Cupping therapy is an ancient form of alternative medicine in which a local suction is created on the skin; practitioners believe this mobilizes blood flow in order to promote healing.[1]
Suction is created using heat (fire) or mechanical devices (hand or
electrical pumps). It is known in local languages as baguan/baguar,
badkesh, banki, bahnkes, bekam, buhang, bentusa, kyukaku, gak hoi, Hijamah, kavaa (ކަވާ), singhi among others.

There is reason to believe the practice dates from as early as 3000 B.C.; the earliest record of cupping is in the Ebers Papyrus, one of the oldest medical textbooks in the world. It describes in 1,550 B.C. Egyptians used cupping. Archaeologists have found evidence in China of cupping dating back to 1,000 B.C. In ancient Greece, Hippocrates
(c. 400 B.C.) used cupping for internal disease and structural
problems. This method in multiple forms spread into medicine throughout
Asian and European civilizations.[citation needed]

Cupping in Europe and the Middle East grew from humoral medicine,
a system of health ancient Greeks used to restore balance through the
four "humors" in the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
This system was pervasive in European and Middle-East cultures at the
time. Humoral medicine had a brief or short revival in European medicine
in the 18th and 19th centuries, and cupping was used in this practice.[3]

In the West, cupping therapy was part of the basic repertoire of
clinical skills a doctor was expected to understand and practice until
the latter part of the 19th century with some Eastern European countries
such as in Poland and Bulgaria
continuing to practice cupping therapy to the present. In parts of
Western Europe there has been a recent upsurge in the interest from both
public and academic perspectives. Scientific studies researching the
effects of cupping therapy attempt to better understand the mechanisms
underpinning this age old medical treatment. Societies like the British
Cupping Society have contributed to its re-emergence as an alternative
therapy.